Hearing what you 'think' is different than a constructive critique, neither of which I feel you truly gave. You instead just seem to rather bash it. Thus my whining comment.'Twas your attitude I'm responding to. I've not been able to find the Americanists, perhaps you need to give me a link, so I can better understand your argument. You think it's my disregarding it, but even languages like Turkish, Italian, and French change their spelling when it's necessary to have such morphophonological changes. Ah ah, maybe you're using your own dialect as a 'supradialect' because for me words like Musician have a /j/ in it. I make a distinction between <-cian> and say <shun>, and the /j/ is it.

Now your last statement is an good one to consider. I have thought on that specifically because of issues of dialect vs. standard dialect. My initial thought is to send it out, and then if the dialects merge (as media, television, movies, and the internet are helping do) then there shan't be a problem. I also figure it may also emphasis dialectal difference more and maybe even help promote awareness and acceptance.

You seem keep arguing about it being a system for English speakers to already be used to, but that's not the goal. I know that'd factor in, but if people adopt the system it'd only take a few months to get used to it.

linguoboy wrote:(My emphasis.) I'm sorry you can't tell the difference between "telling what I think" and "whining", but fundamentally that's not my problem.And if this is your attitude to the mildest constructive criticism, it won't ever be.See my remarks above. This was the same challenge the Americanists faced and they found a different solution, one that I think is much more intuitive for English speakers. You could at least make an attempt to explain why you feel your solution is superior.The morphophonological alternation which underlies this "quirk" isn't bad or unnecessary, it's simply a feature of the language. You disregard it (and other features like it) at your peril.

But ci doesn't represent /ʃj/, it represents /ʃ/. There is no phoneme cluster to split. There's a complex interrelationship between the elements of English spelling. You can't assign a symbol a value which it has only in a very specific context (e.g. before i + vowel in Latinate words) and expect this to make any sense to the average user. That's one of the main points of the Zompist article I linked to.

The only alternative to promoting a supradialectal solution is promoting a specific dialect. Given the highly plurilocal nature of modern English, this bias is likely to prevent your system from ever being given a chance.

Blackkdark wrote:You've not been constructive until now actually. Thus my part about you whining and not helping. Constructive criticism has to do with working with trying to better the system.

My criticisms have remained consistent from my very first response. I don't know why they seem "constructive" to you only now.

Blackkdark wrote:You saying we should shut this discussion down is not such a criticism.

I think you have me confused with THEthe. Where have I ever suggested we "shut this discussion down"?

Blackkdark wrote:It has nothing to do with American English, there are similar distinctions in nearly all forms of English, and it can apply, if not varied in some ways for all forms.

I'm sorry, but this is where you're simply wrong. The system as it stands cannot apply to all forms because it ignores phonemic distinctions that are found in other varieties of English than the one represented. Before you go further with your project, I highly recommend you read Wells' The accents of English. In particular, his explanation of lexical sets is invaluable to anyone interested in the phonology of English. Even if two dialects have the exact same phoneme inventories, this still doesn't mean these phonemes are distributed identically in each.

Blackkdark wrote:Meh, English familiarity is not my concern. I'd rather have one that is closer to the European system. Most European languages use similar symbols for vowels in similar/the same locations.

What language uses y for a non-high central vowel other than Welsh? And if compatibility with the "European system" (which I would consider a false generalisation, given the diversity found within Europe) is your goal, then it makes the consonant reassignments I cavilled about earlier even less explicable.

Blackkdark wrote:I'm sorry, but if we want to keep historical forms, we should keep historical pronunciation.

Keeping historical values for combinations of letters doesn't mean keeping historical pronunciations. Modern respellings like donut, lite, and wut are based on the principle of using familiar values in innovative ways. The results are immediately comprehensible to users of the present orthography despite representing a clear break with historical forms.

Blackkdark wrote:Hearing what you 'think' is different than a constructive critique

If you say so.

Blackkdark wrote:I've not been able to find the Americanists

Try harder; after all, I gave you the names of two of the most famous of them. It's difficult to get very far into a linguistics programme at an American university without hearing of them, that's how important their work is.

You think it's my disregarding it, but even languages like Turkish, Italian, and French change their spelling when it's necessary to have such morphophonological changes.

Examples from French and Italian, please?

Ah ah, maybe you're using your own dialect as a 'supradialect' because for me words like Musician have a /j/ in it. I make a distinction between <-cian> and say <shun>, and the /j/ is it.

Colour me sceptical until I've seen a spectrograph of your natural speech. Most speakers think they make distinctions that they don't actually make in practice.

Blackkdark wrote:You seem keep arguing about it being a system for English speakers to already be used to, but that's not the goal. I know that'd factor in, but if people adopt the system it'd only take a few months to get used to it.

But if the goal is get English speakers to actually adopt a new system, then you'd better factor in familiarity. Ask yourself this: Why would a fluent adult speaker who already knows the ins and outs of the current orthography want to adopt your system? Because that's your audience--or, if you prefer, your market. How do you know you've given people what they're really looking for in a reformed orthography?

THEthe wrote:dude, you are not interesed in a new spelling for the english language; so why you sare still here?really? nothing else to do?

if somebody is interesed we can discuss how we can use tower othography,you are not interesed.

Have a look at your last five posts. Now compare them to my last five posts. Which one of us is actually discussing the Tower Orthography and which one of us is simply trying to boss other people around? If you don't like my comments, you don't have to read them, but I'm not going to go away just because you--or anyone else--tell me to.

What English speaker says [mjuːˈzɪʃ.jn̩]? Some conservative speakers say [mjuːˈzɪs.jn̩], and those with yod-coalescence say [mjuːˈzɪʃ.n̩]. I can't think of a single English word that allows the cluster /ʃj/.

Last edited by Talib on Sun 21 Mar 2010 5:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

linguoboy wrote:My criticisms have remained consistent from my very first response. I don't know why they seem "constructive" to you only now.

They don't seem constructive, 'tis my point.

linguoboy wrote:I think you have me confused with THEthe. Where have I ever suggested we "shut this discussion down"?

You said, "Let's just shut down the forum then, shall we?"

linguoboy wrote:I'm sorry, but this is where you're simply wrong. The system as it stands cannot apply to all forms because it ignores phonemic distinctions that are found in other varieties of English than the one represented. Before you go further with your project, I highly recommend you read Wells' The accents of English. In particular, his explanation of lexical sets is invaluable to anyone interested in the phonology of English. Even if two dialects have the exact same phoneme inventories, this still doesn't mean these phonemes are distributed identically in each.

I wouldn't say I'm wrote, probably because we can to a large degree find the common ground in which all dialects have, otherwise then we have issues with mutual intelligibility, and I would say we need to start renaming dialects languages. But the system can be different and then converge, or then it can split further, but the system is relevant.

linguoboy wrote:What language uses y for a non-high central vowel other than Welsh? And if compatibility with the "European system" (which I would consider a false generalisation, given the diversity found within Europe) is your goal, then it makes the consonant reassignments I cavilled about earlier even less explicable.

Not everything fit perfectly, I'm aware. Many languages that have a schwa don't have a separate symbol for it, or if they do it's a variation of <e> or <a>. English is very keen on using it a lot, I decided to use some of the leftover symbols for that.

linguoboy wrote:Keeping historical values for combinations of letters doesn't mean keeping historical pronunciations. Modern respellings like donut, lite, and wut are based on the principle of using familiar values in innovative ways. The results are immediately comprehensible to users of the present orthography despite representing a clear break with historical forms.

But we are still so very different, and in a sense people keep saying our language and language skills are fading. There's a whole list of socio-political reasons for that, but my point is, it may be easier with a system that's more consistently spelt to the pronunciation, even if 'tisn't perfect.

French has the changing of c and ç, which tries to preserve spellings which would otherwise change if the vowel changed. English allows such changes as Judge to Judgment without the vowel that changed the sound to begin with. Italian uses <h> to fill in similar spots.

The familiarity argument is worthless when you look at peoples who have up and dropped the way they spelt it to the way they spell it. Like the Romanians, Turks, etc.

However, I think the criticism isn't really helpful. The system in it self works as an alternate writing system. If you don't agree with the particular symbols I used, that's okay, and I respect your opinion here, but it really wasn't what thethe was supposed to put.

Please, THEthe, stop with the anger. It's not helping, in fact it's making us look mean.

I think there was a misunderstanding about what this topic was supposed to be. I don't think we were looking for arguments for or against Tawyr, instead, I think we were interested in people who wanted to work with using it.

I'd appreciate it if we could stop with the bickering to and fro about it. It's entirely unnecessary.